Southeastern Conference

San Bernardino Cajon High School won its first Southeastern Conference championship Friday night the same way it won the rest of its games this season--with a heavy emphasis on the run. The Cowboys, dominating defending conference champion Arroyo from the start, used an overpowering rushing attack led by tailback Michael Beauregard to coast to a 44-6 win in front of 4,500 at Cajon. Beauregard, a senior, rushed for 333 yards and 4 touchdowns in 25 carries for the Cowboys (13-1).

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Craig Kuligowski heard the words, but at first they didn't register. In nearly three decades in college football, the University of Missouri defensive line coach had come to view summer team-building sessions as a typically uneventful training camp exercise. So he wasn't expecting different on a sweltering day last August when he gathered 15 players in a nondescript, windowless meeting room on the first floor of the Mizzou Athletic Training Complex. There, beneath seven black-and-gold placards professing an adherence to teamwork, camaraderie and character, one of the players tested whether those were core values or just empty words.

While politicians and others heaped praise Monday on NFL prospect Michael Sam for announcing that he's gay, calling him a pioneer in the sports world, the news was largely met in pro football circles with a collective shrug. The pressing issue for those football types: How well can he play? "Times have changed; it's a nonissue," said one NFL team executive of Sam, a University of Missouri senior defensive end. "If he can play, everything will be fine. It's going to be a story.

The presidents of the 12 Southeastern Conference schools have voted to divide the SEC into two divisions, with each team playing eight league football games a year, the SEC announced today. The presidents also approved on Wednesday, during a telephone conference call, a plan for a 16-game men's basketball schedule. The division of the conference was made possible when Arkansas and South Carolina agreed to become new members earlier this year.

Florida fans remember Georgia's Tim Worley as the tailback who ruined their team's one-week reign as the nation's No. 1 team in 1985. Worley did in the Gators again Saturday, rushing for 135 yards and 2 touchdowns as the 19th-ranked Bulldogs trounced Florida, 26-3, in a Southeastern Conference game at Jacksonville, Fla. "We felt like we had something to prove," said Worley, who rushed for 104 yards and a touchdown in Georgia's 24-3 upset of Florida 3 seasons ago.

Michael Sam, an All-American defensive lineman from Missouri, could soon become the first openly gay NFL player, and he took to Twitter on Sunday night "to thank everybody for their support and encouragement. " Sam, the co-defensive player of the year in the Southeastern Conference, came out to his Missouri Tigers teammates in August but did not go public with his sexual orientation until interviews published Sunday by the New York Times and ESPN's "Outside the Lines. " "I didn't realize how many people actually knew, and I was afraid that someone would tell or leak something out about me," Sam told ESPN.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - - The final Saturday of the first Bowl Championship Series season in 1998 ended with shocking losses by Kansas State and UCLA that turned the BCS on its ear hole. Wild endings in St. Louis and Miami that day put Tennessee and Florida State in the first title game. It seemed only right that the final Saturday of the last BCS season should match that chaotic conclusion. Well, it certainly tried. In the end, though, somehow, it sort of broke cleanly. How?

Leave it to Alabama senior quarterback AJ McCarron to put everything in perspective. "Football is just a game," he said after Saturday's last-play loss to Auburn. "It's not life. " Leave it to senior Auburn administrator Jay Jacobs to boil the Southeastern Conference down to the ruthless, political blood sport that it is. Jacobs, the school's athletic director, told USA Today it would be a "disservice to the nation" if the SEC champion is left out of this season's Bowl Championship Series title game.

Fans from Berkeley, Calif., to Key Biscayne, Fla., must have done a spontaneous spit take when Ohio State Coach Urban Meyer announced his frustration with the lame-duck Bowl Championship Series. "I think it's a flawed system," Meyer said Monday. Here's another bulletin: Bill Gates is rich. Ohio State is 10-0 with three games left but is not likely to finish in the top two unless Alabama and/or Florida State lose. It would also help if Baylor lost. The Buckeyes are currently third in the BCS standings, by a slim margin, with Baylor set to move to No. 3 if it wins Saturday at Oklahoma State.

Break out the chips and cold drinks, but let Chris Dufresne handle the remote. The Times' national college football writer handicaps what's worth watching, and skipping, on Saturday's menu of games: MORNING No. 18 Louisville (6-1) at South Florida (2-4) 9 a.m., ESPN2 We'll find out if Louisville's moping period is over since last week's home loss to Central Florida. Louisville probably wasn't going to win the national title anyway, so it needs to get on with the business of winning the American Athletic Conference and earning an automatic Bowl Championship Series bid. South Florida opened the season with four straight losses but has bounced back to defeat Cincinnati and Connecticut.

Texas A&M and Missouri, two average programs from the Big 12, joined the Southeastern Conference two years ago. There were supposed to be growing pains. In fact, many people thought the schools would get devoured in America's best football conference. But Texas A&M, in its first year, became the only team to defeat national champion Alabama. And Saturday, Missouri improved to 7-0 for the season and took a two-game lead in the SEC East. A two-game lead in a division with Georgia, South Carolina and Florida?

Sunday's first release of the Bowl Championship Series standings got a last-minute shipment of adjustments, edits and amendments. They arrived in a packaged labeled "Saturday. " The last year of the BCS (sob, sob) is sure going to be fun. The top 25 got worked over this weekend with defeats suffered by half the teams in the top 10. The implosion started Friday night when No. 8 Louisville lost at home to Central Florida and then spilled into a bloodbath Saturday. No. 9 UCLA fell at No. 13 Stanford at about the same time Auburn was pulling off an upset over No. 7 Texas A&M in College Station.